I set up my Facebook account when I entered high school. I remember sitting on the floor of my room, right next to the tall white bookshelves, internally squealing when my mom told me that I could finally get a Facebook.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have stayed far away from the computer that evening.

If I knew that a Facebook comment could drive a child to their death or that a website with naked women would ruin a marriage, I never would have filled out the sign-up credentials.

The internet has become a crazy place. We so often appreciate it for all that it does for us—there is no way any of us would have survived high school without SparkNotes or Wikipedia—but so often we turn a blind eye towards the evils of the cyber-world.

Now maybe not completely blind, there are so many people, celebrities and us "normal" folk alike, that try to have conversations about cyber-bullying or problems of the internet. But how often do we have that conversation, and when we don't see any progress, with a measly shrug think, "Well, I tried."

It is so incredibly easy to sit back and let everything unfold on the screen before us. We can shop, order food, look at photos of far away places, and form relationships all from the comfort of our own home. But what does that do to our real world experiences?

Many millennials appear to have claimed the word "awkward" as an adjective to describe themselves. More often than not, it is used humorously to pass off a weird social interaction, but could it mean more? I know so many people, myself included, that hate talking on the phone. It could be nearly to the point of an emergency, but when the phone rings, I just don't want to answer the phone. And forget about asking me to call some professional group, like a bank or insurance company, one of my biggest fears! Could that feeling of fear of awkward situations stem from the face that we are just so much more comfortable sitting behind our computers?

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat have made it so much easier to be mean. You no longer have to stand in front of a person to say something terrible about them; you no longer see a person's reaction to your terrible words and understand how your words may have hurt someone. There is now a wall that protects the bully from the bullied, and that wall has begun to isolate us from emotions that make us human and help us understand the humanity of others.

And while texting has become such an incredible form of communication, it also has made it easier to misinterpret the words of others. You are no longer able to hear the change in someone's voice to hear their excitement or sadness. It is all up to the reader and how they're feeling that day or what they think you may be feeling.

While the internet boom has been helpful in some pretty awesome ways (allowing us to keep in contact with friends and family who live far away, interact directly with celebrities, contact someone immediately, etc.), it has also created a form of disconnect between us all as well. When I was growing up, before the internet became the empire it is today, my friends and I would play outside, my family and I would sit around the dinner table together, and if I was lucky, my mom or dad would read to me in the evenings. Now after dinner, my family sits in the same room, each of us preoccupied with our own device, "family time" becoming "internet time."

There are marriages and relationships suffering at the hands of pornography because it is so easy to get ahold of, any fetish you want at the end of a search engine. Friendships are ruined through passive-aggressive Facebook posts or gossip spread through a simple text. Reputations are smeared through a simple screenshot of a Snap.

We are now at the mercy of our technological captors, and I'm not entirely convinced we will be able to find our way back. But I do know this: Each moment you turn your phone off or exit the web browser, have a real conversation with your devices stored far away, sit outside with your face in the sunshine and breath of summer on your face and are no longer thinking of what someone may have posted recently. That is when we start to find ourselves again, when we start to catch a glimpse of the true joy we used to have. And I hope we can recognize that joy and hold on to it for as long as possible, and maybe, just maybe stay in that place and leave the internet out of intimacy for good.

*The images used throughout this article belong to Eric Pickersgill's photography portfolio titled "Removed." If you'd like to see more of his incredible images depicting how we let life happen around us while being pulled into our devices, visit the portfolio website here!*